Tori Spelling Is Telling All in New Book

Prologue:

When you're a kid, you don't worry what anyone thinks. You
go around saying whatever pops into your head or picking
your teeth, and it never occurs to you that someone might think
you're gross, awkward, or ridiculous. That was me — picking my
nose, snorting when I laughed, wearing white after Labor Day — I
just was who I was.

That all changed one day at the tender age of
twelve when I was getting ready for a family photo. We were having
a formal family portrait taken with our dogs (doesn't everyone
do that?), and I was getting frustrated with my bangs. I couldn't get
them to do whatever a twelve-year-old in 1985 wanted bangs to do.

So I went into my parents' bathroom, all dressed up, with my hair
done as best I could manage, and asked my mother, "Am I pretty?"
She looked at me and said, "You will be when we get your nose
done."

I was stunned. My nose, as noses tend to be, was right in the
middle of my face, and I had just been told that it was ugly. So long,
innocence.

To be fair, let the record show that my mother has absolutely
no recollection of making this comment. I know this because in
high school I took a class called Human Development, taught by
Mrs. Wildflower. In it we had to keep a journal (her name was Mrs.
Wildflower — what did you expect?), and when Mrs. Wildflower read
my story about the nose incident, she called my parents. That afternoon
I came home to find my mother crying. She said, "I never said
that. I'd never say something like that." I'm sure she was telling the
truth as she remembered it.

Nonetheless, I had my nose done the minute I turned sixteen. Or
didn't you hear? But what I realized as a twelve-year-old was bigger
than that I was destined for the plastic surgeon's chair. I realized that
how other people saw me wasn't necessarily how I saw myself. Feeling
pretty or smart or happy wasn't all there was to it. What I hadn't
considered before was how I was perceived. And it wasn't the last
criticism I'd hear about my nose.

Little did I know then how huge a role public perception would
play in my life. My nose, and pretty much every other "prominent"
body part and feature, would be prey to gossip and tabloids in just
a few years. But the unwanted attention wasn't limited to my body.

According to the press, I was the rich, spoiled daughter of TV producer
Aaron Spelling. They claimed I grew up in California's largest
single-family residence. They said that my father had fake snow
made on his Beverly Hills lawn for Christmas. They said I was the
ultimate example of nepotism, a lousy actor who nonetheless scored
a lead role in her father's hit TV show. They pigeonholed me as my
character on Beverly Hills, 90210 : Donna Martin, the ditzy blonde
virgin. They later talked about my wedding, my divorce, and my
second wedding. They reported that I'd been disinherited and was
feuding with my mother. They told about the birth of my son. What
I learned from my ugly nose was true times a million: The details of
my life were and would always be considered public property.

Some of what you may have read about me is accurate (my father
did hire a snow machine for Christmas), some false (I didn't live in
that enormous house until I was seventeen), and some exaggerated
(I wasn't "disinherited"). But all the while the life I was living was
much more than that. I lived in fear of my own doll collection. I let a
bad boyfriend spend my 90210 salary. I planned a fairy-tale wedding
to the wrong man. I begged casting directors to forget that Donna
Martin ever existed. I was working hard and shopping like crazy. I
was falling in love and getting hurt.

My life has been funnier and sadder and richer and poorer than any of the magazines know.
Public opinion dies hard. To this day I still look in the mirror and
hate my nose. Still, everyone else has been telling stories about me
for decades now. It's about time I told a few of my own.

Chapter One: X Marks the Spot

Here's the part of my book where I'm supposed to say, Sure, my
family had lots of money, but I had a normal childhood just like
everyone else. Yeah, I could say that, but I'd be lying. My childhood
was really weird. Not better or worse than anyone else's childhood,
but definitely different.

Part of it was the whole holiday thing. My parents liked to make
a spectacle, and the press ate it up. Like I said, it's true that my
father got snow for our backyard one Christmas. But that's only
half the story, if anyone's counting — he actually did it twice. The
first time was when I was five. My father told our family friend
Aunt Kay that he wanted me to have a white Christmas. She did
some research, made a few calls, and at six a.m. on Christmas Day
a truck from Barrington Ice in Brentwood pulled up to our house.

My dad, Aunt Kay, and a security guard dragged garbage bags
holding eight tons of ice into the back where there was plastic covering
a fifteen-foot-square patch of the yard. They spread the snow
out over the plastic, Dad with a pipe hanging from his mouth. To
complete the illusion, they added a Styrofoam snowman that my
father had ordered up from the props department at his studio. It
was eighty degrees out, but they dressed me up in a ski jacket and
hat and brought me out into the yard, exclaiming, "Oh, look, it
snowed! In all of Los Angeles it snowed right here in your backyard!
Aren't you a lucky girl?"

I'm sure that little white patch was as amazing to a five-year-old as
seeing a sandbox for the first time, but my parents didn't stop there.
Five years later they were thinking bigger, and technology was too.
This time, again with Aunt Kay's guidance, my dad hired a snow
machine to blow out so much powder that it not only filled the
tennis court, it created a sledding hill at one end of the court. I
was ten and my brother, Randy, was five. They dressed us in full-on
snowsuits (the outfits were for the photos, of course — it was a typical
eighty-five degrees out). According to Aunt Kay, the sledding hill
lasted three days and everyone came to see the snow in Beverly Hills:
Robert Wagner, Mel Brooks … not that I noticed or cared. Randy
and I spent Christmas running up the hill and zooming down in red
plastic saucer sleds. Even our dogs got to slide down the hill. It was
a pretty spectacular day for an L.A. girl.

My parents didn't get the concept of having me grow up like other
kids. When I was about eight, my class took a field trip to my dad's
studio. It was a fun day — my father showed us around and had some
surprises planned, such as a stuntman breaking "glass" over some
kid's head. But then, at the end of the day, the whole class stood for
a photo. My father and I were in the back row. Just before the shutter
clicked, he picked me up and held me high above the class. My face
in the photo says it all. I was beyond embarrassed that my father was
lifting me up like that. I just wanted to fit in. When I complained to
him, he said, "But you couldn't be seen." He just didn't get it.

And then there were the birthday parties. The setting was always
the backyard of our house on the corner of Mapleton and Sunset
Boulevard in Holmby Hills, a fancy area on the west side of Los
Angeles. It was a very large house — though not the gigantic manor
where everyone thinks I grew up — maybe 10,000 square feet. It was
designed by the noted L.A. architect Paul Williams, whose many
public buildings include the famous Beverly Hills Hotel. A house he
designed in Bel-Air was used for exterior scenes of the Colby mansion
on my dad's television series The Colbys. Our house's back lawn
was probably an acre surrounded by landscaping with a pool and
tennis court, the regular features of houses in that neighborhood.

As I remember it, the theme for my birthdays was always Raggedy
Ann, and there would be a doll centerpiece and rented tables and
chairs with matching tablecloths, napkins, and cups. But every party
had some new thrill. There were carnival moon bounces, which
weren't common then as they are today, and fair booths lined up
on both sides of the lawn offering games of ringtoss, balloon darts,
duck floats, Whac-A-Mole, and the like. One birthday had a dancing
poodle show conducted by a man in a circus ringleader's outfit.
Another included a puppet show with life-size puppets. And one year
we had a surprise visit from Smidget, who at the time was the smallest
living horse. My godfather, Dean Martin, whom I called Uncle
Bean, always brought me a money tree — a little tree with rolled up
twenty-dollar bills instead of leaves. Just what a girl like me needed.

When my sixth-grade class graduated, we had a party at my house
for which my father hired the USC marching band. Apparently, my
dad first approached UCLA, but they said no. According to Aunt
Kay, who organized a lot of these parties for my parents, my father
told her, "Money is no object." Well, it must have been an object
to the USC marching band because all one hundred plus members
showed up to play "Pomp and Circumstance" and whatever else
marching bands come up with to play at sixth-grade graduations. I
have to admit I didn't even remember the marching band's presence
until Aunt Kay told me about it.

What I remember are the things a twelve-year-old remembers: the rented dance floor and the DJ and
hoping that the boy I liked would ask me to slow dance to "Crazy
for You" by Madonna. I remember swimming in the pool. I remember
feeling sad that we were all moving on to different schools. I
remember being only mildly embarrassed that my mother was hula
hooping on the dance floor, but I'm sure I was truly embarrassed by
the marching band.

My parents were endlessly generous, and those parties were spectacular
… on paper. The reality was a little more complicated. For
every birthday and Christmas my big present was always a Madame
Alexander doll. Madame Alexander dolls are classic, collectible dolls.
Sort of like a rich man's Barbie, but — at least in my house — they
were meant for display, not play. My mother loved the best of the
best, for herself and for me. She was known for her Dynasty-style
jewelry — quarter-size emeralds dangling off nickel-size diamonds.
Most attention-grabbing was the forty-four-carat diamond ring
she always wore. That's right — no typo. Forty-four carats. Walking
around with that thing must have been as good as weight lifting. I
always begged her not to wear the ring to school functions. But that
was her everyday style — put together in blouses with Chanel belts,
slim jeans, Chanel flats, perfectly manicured red nails, and a heavy
load of jewelry worth millions of dollars.

As for the Madame Alexander dolls, every birthday, as soon as I
unwrapped them, they were whisked away, tags still attached, to a
special display case in my room that had a spotlight for each doll. No
way in hell was I allowed to dress and undress them or (God forbid!)
cut their hair. Every time I unwrapped a present, my heart sank a
little bit when I saw that same powder blue box. I knew that all I
had was a new, untouchable doll to add to my expensive collection.
But my mother would be smiling with pleasure. She loved the dolls,
had always coveted them as a girl, and wanted me to have something
special. I didn't want to hurt her feelings, so I always thanked her
and acted excited — she had no idea that all I wanted (at some point)
was a Barbie Dream House.

So now imagine another birthday party. I was four or five. The
great lawn was festooned with balloons and streamers. Colorful
booths lined the perimeter of its downward slope. And in the center
of it all was a mysterious white sheet with a big red X painted
across it.

In the middle of the festivities a plane flew overhead. I was just
starting to read, but our family friend Aunt Kay had spent all morning
teaching me how to read Happy Birthday, Tori. Not coincidentally,
the plane was pulling a banner saying just that. I read it and was
thrilled and proud, jumping up and down and clapping my hands
in excitement. Aunt Kay waved to the pilot, and he dropped a little
parachute with a mystery gift attached to its strings. So dramatic!
It was supposed to hit the X on the sheet, but instead, it landed in
a tree. One of the carnival workers had to climb the tree to get it
down. I later found out that Aunt Kay had to get special permits for
the plane to fly that low over the house.

As soon as my present was liberated, I ran to the box and pulled
away the padding until I got to the present. I tore open the wrapping
paper, and there it was. The powder blue box. Another Madame
Alexander doll. This one was a surprise, along with the plane, from
Aunt Kay. (Some of my most valuable dolls were gifts from her collection.)
My friends oohed and aahed, and I fake-squealed with joy.
Then I handed the doll over to my mother so her dress wouldn't
get dirty.

At some point I wondered if all these spectacular events were
actually being done for me. Really, how many sixth-grade girls' biggest
fantasy is for a college marching band to play at their graduation?
Take Halloween. When I was five or six, my mother decided I
would go as a bride. No polyester drugstore costume for me, no sir.
Halloween found me wearing a custom bridal gown made by the
noted fashion designer Nolan Miller, with padded boobs and false
eyelashes. And, like many Halloweens, I wore high heels. It wasn't
easy to find heels for a young child, so my mother went through the
Yellow Pages until she found a "little person" store that sold grownup
shoes in my size.

Then there was the Marie Antoinette costume my mother had
Nolan Miller make for me when I was nine or ten. My five-year-old
brother, Randy, was Louis XVI (a costume that actually suited him —
even at that young age, he was already showing a taste for the finer
things. We'd go to a restaurant and he'd tell the waiter, "For my appetizer
I'll have the escargot.") My Marie Antoinette costume had golden
brocade, a boned bodice, and gigantic hip bustles. It was topped off
with an enormous powdered wig of ringlets so heavy that I got my
first headache. I looked like one of those Madame Alexander
dolls ofwhich my mother was so fond. Meanwhile, Randy got off easy in a
ruffled red coat and a comparatively lightweight wig.

My parents drove their young royals to the flats of Beverly Hills,
L.A.'s prime trick-or-treating turf. The houses were closer together
than those in our neighborhood but still inhabited by rich people
who didn't think twice about giving out full-size candy bars. Not that
we got to keep any of the candy we collected anyway. My mother
was paranoid about hidden razor blades and poisoned chocolate,
so she always confiscated our booty and replaced it with bags she'd
painstakingly assembled herself.

As I wobbled my way down the street trying to adjust to my new
center of gravity, some kids threw raw eggs at me. I barely felt the
first couple — they must have hit my bustle. But then, as if in slow
motion, I saw two eggs coming toward us, one at me, one at my
brother. Randy darted out of the line of fire, but I couldn't escape
because of my enormous petticoats. An egg hit me in the ear. I wish
I could at least claim it was some French immigrants avenging their
eighteenth-century proletariat ancestors, but I think I was just caught
in run-of-the-mill vampire/Jedi knight cross fire.

After the Marie Antoinette debacle, I'd had it. When Halloween
rolled around again, I begged to be anything other than a historical
figure. I wanted to be a plain old bunny. You know, the classic
Halloween costume: plastic mask, grocery bag for candy, jacket
hiding the one-piece paper outfit. My mother agreed to the bunny
concept. But instead of drawn-on whiskers and bunny ears on a
headband, I had a hand-sewn bunny costume, which had me in
(fake) fur from head to toe with just my face showing. Who was I
to complain? It was the best bunny costume a girl could ever want.
Unfortunately, after four houses I had an allergy attack and had to
go home.

For all the effort and fanfare my parents put into my childhood,
I'm most sentimental about some of the lower-key indulgences, the
ones that had nothing to do with how I was dressed or what kind of
party our family could throw. We have a beach house in Malibu, and
whenever we went there, my mother and I would walk out to the
end of our beach to pick shells. (This is the same beach house where
Dean Martin, my Uncle Bean, came to stay for a summer during his
divorce. He was a huge golfer and traveled with a stockpile of golf
balls that had his autograph printed on them. Every morning he'd
set up a driving range on the private beach in front of our house and
shoot golf balls into the ocean. People from all sides of the beach
would be diving into the water to collect those golf balls as souvenirs,
but Uncle Bean would just keep hitting the balls, completely
oblivious.)

Anyway, whenever my mother and I went shelling, she
always brought her purse, which wasn't suspicious since she smoked
at the time. I'd hunt for shells and she'd urge me on, pointing me to
spots I'd missed. It never took me long to find a few big, beautiful,
polished seashells. I was always telling my friends that Malibu had
the most amazing seashells.

My Malibu illusions were shattered when I was twelve. We took a
family trip to Europe, but because my father refused to fly, we took
the scenic route. It started with a three-day train trip to New York
in a private train car attached to the back of a regular Amtrak train.
We brought two nannies, my mother's assistant, and two security
guards. From New York we took the Queen Elizabeth II to Europe.
I loved the boat — it had a shopping mall, restaurants, and a movie
theater — but what excited me most was that they had little arts-andcrafts
activities scheduled for the kids. It was the closest to summer
camp I ever got. (It was also the farthest from home I ever got. Every
other family vacation was spent in Vegas, mostly because you could
get there by car.) In England we made the tourist rounds: Trafalgar
Square, Madame Tussaud's, and so on. Of course, when my mother
saw the Crown Jewels at the Tower of London she commented, "I
have a necklace bigger than that." It was true. She did.
But I was talking about the breaking of the Malibu seashell mythology.

In England I was reading OK! or Hello! — one of those gossip
magazines that were more respectable back in the eighties — and I
came across an interview with my parents. In it my mother talks
about how she used to buy exotic seashells and hide them for me on
the beach in Malibu. Total shock to me. So much for the beautiful
seashells of Malibu. You know your family doesn't exactly communicate
well when you find out things like this in weekly magazines.

Part of why I was upset about the seashells (beyond normal almost-teenage
angst) was that it had only been the year before that I realized
there was no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny. All I knew was that
every year on the night before Easter, the Easter Bunny would call
me on the phone and tell me to be a good girl. And every Christmas
Eve the phone would ring and Santa's workers would inform my
father that Santa had landed and he was approaching our house. A
few moments later there'd be a knock at the door and … there was
Santa. My brother and I would rush to greet him in our coordinated
Christmas outfits. I'd be wearing a red overalls dress with a white
shirt and red kneesocks, and Randy would be wearing red overalls
shorts with a white shirt and red kneesocks. We'd sit on Santa's lap,
one on each knee, and tell him what we wanted for Christmas. Then
he'd tell us to get to bed early, that tomorrow was a big day, and he'd
ho-ho-ho out the door. It didn't always go so smoothly — like the
time that Randy peed on Santa's knee — but for the most part that
was what had gone on for years, and I saw no reason to believe the
kids at school when they said Santa was bunk. I saw him with my
own eyes.

I probably would have kept believing if my cousin Meredith
hadn't come over for a sleepover when I was eleven. She was a year
older than I was, and that fact alone made her cool. I was really
psyched that she was spending the night. It was Easter, and I must
have said something about the Easter Bunny's imminent arrival
because she was like, "You're kidding that you think there's an Easter
Bunny." I said, "Yes, there is." Then she said, "Don't tell me you
believe in Santa, too!" The kids at school were eleven like I was —
what did they know? Why should I believe them? But Meredith
was twelve. She knew stuff. I had to concede. If it hadn't been for
her, who knows how long the charade might have gone on. Oh,
and after that I never saw Meredith again. I think her disclosures
convinced my parents that she was a bad influence.

As a kid I felt deceived to discover my parents had been lying, but
now I realize it was pretty lovely. My mother loved decorating for
and with us — coloring Easter eggs, carving jack-o'-lanterns, setting
up moving Santa scenes at Christmastime. The seashells, the holiday
characters, the decorations, these were pure, sweet moments that
weren't about putting on a show, they were about making us happy.
These were the heartfelt private gifts from my parents for which I
never knew to thank them.

Looking back, what I remember with the most affection is being
four years old and having a dad who would sit in the Jacuzzi with
me and make up stories. My father was a slight man with slouchy
shoulders that made him appear even smaller. For all his power in
Hollywood, most of the time he'd appear in a jogging suit with a
pipe. He spoke in a soft voice with a hint of Texas twang and would
come right up to you to shake your hand or give you a hug even
if he didn't know you well. The overall effect was very Wizard of
Oz man-behind-the curtain — this unimposing, gentle guy is the
famous Aaron Spelling? People always felt comfortable with him
right away.

He and I would sit in the hot tub, and he'd be Hansel and I'd be
Gretel and my mom (upstairs with a migraine) would be the witch.
(Yes, I now think this is weird, if not psychologically damaging, that
my father let me cast my unwitting mother as the villain. At least I
can say that on the day I have in mind I kept looking up at the window
of my mother's bedroom, hoping to see the shade go up, which
meant the witch felt better and might join us at the pool.) Or we'd
play Chasen's.

Chasen's restaurant, which is now closed, was a legendary celebrity
hangout on Beverly Boulevard in Beverly Hills. Frank Sinatra,
Alfred Hitchcock, Marilyn Monroe, Jimmy Stewart, and most of
the Hollywood elite were regulars in their day. When I was a kid, the
family would go to Chasen's on Mother's Day or Father's Day for a
fancy celebration. So my dad and I would recline in the Jacuzzi and
say, "We've just arrived at Chasen's. What should we order?"

A few years later I asked my parents for an allowance because the
other kids at school had allowances. My father wanted to give me
five dollars, but I wanted only twenty-five cents because that's what
the other kids got. Dad told me that in order to earn my allowance,
I'd have to help out around the house, so he gave me a job and said
he'd do it with me. Every weekend we'd go out into the yard to scoop
up dog poo and rake leaves.

That's right, every weekend TV mogul Aaron Spelling, net worth
equivalent to some small island nation, went out and scooped poo
with his daughter. We hadn't yet moved to the Manor — that enormous
house that the press can't get over — but we still had a large
yard and four dogs. And of course we had gardeners who were supposed
to be taking care of all that. But there was always plenty for
us to pick up, and I suspect he told the gardeners to leave it be. Sort
of like the seashells, I guess — but a lot grosser. No matter, I loved
it. I remember spending a lot of time out on that lawn, hanging out
with my dad, playing softball, or working in the vegetable garden
with him and my mother. One year we grew a zucchini that was
as big as a baby. There are photos of me cradling it. My father was
very proud — no matter what it was, our family liked the biggest and
the best.

For the most part my father thought that money was the way to
show love. Where do you think all those lavish jewels my mother
wore came from? Every holiday he bought her a bigger and brighter
bauble as if to prove his love. When I asked Aunt Kay to help me
remember some of the extravagances, she said, "Money was no
object. That's how much he loved you. There was no limit to what
he would do for you." When my mom and I were planning my wedding,
my father said almost the same thing: "She loves you so much.
Do you know how much she's paying for this wedding? That's how
much she loves you." When it comes down to it, luxury wasn't the
substance of my childhood. Love was, simply, the time my parents
gave me. What I wish my father had understood before he died is
that of all those large-scale memories he and my mother spent so
much money and energy creating, picking up poo is what has stayed
with me my whole life.